Letter: Support for gay marriage is changing in Texas

Posted: January 25, 2014 - 7:47pm

Regarding the editorial (Editorial: Is Texas next?, Jan. 15, amarillo.com), U.S. District Judge Terence Kern got it right when he said: “Equal protection is at the very heart of our legal system and central to our consent to be governed. It is not a scarce commodity to be meted out begrudgingly or in short portions. Therefore, the majority view in Oklahoma must give way to individual constitutional rights.”

Supreme Court law prohibits states from passing laws that are born of animosity against gays and lesbians. Supreme Court law holds that “moral disapproval” does not provide a legitimate justification for infringing upon protections afforded every American under the U.S. Constitution.

Supreme Court law prevents the federal government from treating state-sanctioned opposite-sex marriages differently than state-sanctioned same-sex marriages, and such differentiation “demeans the couple, whose moral and sexual choices the Constitution protects.”

At its core, the legal issue now in play in Utah and Oklahoma (and soon to be Texas) is the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

In addition, the majority view in Texas in 2014 is not the same as it was in 2005, and it continues to evolve. Polling from Texas Politics Project shows support for some form of legal recognition of gay and lesbian relationships (civil unions or marriage) has increased from 60 percent of Texans in 2009 to 69 percent in 2013. Opposition to civil unions and marriage for lesbian and gay couples has decreased from 32 percent in 2009 to 26 percent in 2013.

Over this same time period, marriage has replaced civil unions in Texas as the most popular form of recognition. Like the rest of the country, over time Texans are increasingly aware that marriage is important to gay and lesbian couples for reasons similar to everyone else — marriage is about committing to someone you love and protecting your family.